


Old Friends

by thought



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 12:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1387324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agents texas and Wyoming run into each other nine months post-Freelancer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Friends

Wyoming drives all night, Tex curled up silent in the passenger seat and Gamma flickering restless at the back of his skull. The air tastes like burnt ozone and the too-bright light of the unfamiliar moon shines back off the ground into his eyes like driving snow-blind at high noon. He wants to ask again what she's doing here, head down and fists up on a world glassed and resettled by the sort of people who think that means it's a safe haven. Doubts repetition will get him any better answers than the half shrug he'd got when he'd first run into her the previous day, hunched over an untouched drink in the back corner of a pre-fab shack, smg propped up against the side of her chair like someone trying to remake an old earth western without ever having seen the source material.

He's been tracking his target for a week now, and this trek across barren nighttime ruin in a battered and stolen warthog is one more mark in a tally of indignities. This is what it's come to-- indulging petty criminals with petty grudges for petty cash. That being said, his goal puts him a step above Tex and her silent, morbidly careless ennui. He wonders if this is what premature rampancy looks like. They're neither of them out shooting hinge-heads, which is bordering on treasonous given the UNSC's long-term investment in Freelancer. He's expecting a bullet in the skull courtesy of ONI any day.

Wyoming tried to avoid making friends in Freelancer. He grew up in old money, dabbled in academia and theatre, and gave the best years of his life to ONI3. He certainly has no room to claim ignorance when it comes to the dangers of emotional investment. Yet the entire freelancer program was designed to weld the team together before cracking it apart, and when he thinks Freelancer there's still a part of him that thinks long conversations over tea with Florida; hours flat on his belly awareness whittled down to the wind and the target and the sound of North Dakota matching his breathing on the other end of the radio. And... Well. All he needs do is look to his right to see the dangers of making friends-- Tex went from potentially useful pawn to emotional investment far too quickly for his liking, and now here she sits, nine months out of the program with a weapon and an AI built of rage in her head and he holds no illusions that if she wants him dead he won’t even see it coming. Gamma paces his neurons like a wary tiger. He doesn't like having her here-- likes the idea of not having her here even less, though he'd never say it. Wyoming hordes each truth ruthlessly; re-implantation after a traumatic and non-consensual extraction would've gone poorly enough without the hallucinations and the alcohol and the paranoia on both sides. The performativity of deceit is a delicate weapon, and The Counselor knew how to wield it better than either of them had predicted. There are still days he doesn't trust his own mind. Still days his only truth comes from tearing into the soft place behind Gamma's flat voice and prickly, defensive coding, the space made up purely of analytical observation and a quiet, steady spark of affection.

Tex looks up when he parks the warthog. There’re only two settlements on the entire rock, and that might be too kind a term. Tents and cheap, falling-apart pre-fab units with a few ships and vehicles dotted around the outskirts, nobody sticking around longer than it takes to do business and force down a drink or two. The bodies get tossed out onto the glass right along with the empty bottles and empty fuel packs. The sun's started a lethargic crawl over the horizon, low and yellow and dim like hazy autumn afternoons. The air remains cold and dry. He's had his helmet off for long enough that his lips have gone dry and chapped, and he cracks a spot of blood with his tongue as he hops down out of the vehicle. Tex follows, still graceful and effortless in her physicality even as the expression on her face remains the same bored, listless sort of indifference.

She reaches into the back for her backpack. "Trouble in paradise?"

He glances over. She's holding up the battered memory unit, UNSC logo on one side, severe fire damage on the other but still functional. Some mornings he still wakes up curled around an empty space the same shape, is intimately familiar with the half-conscious slam of terror when his hands close around nothing before Gamma drags him into wakefulness, reassuring and soothing and still there. He shrugs.

"We’re realists, my dear. I find nothing romantic in the notion of meeting my end at the hand of malicious coding, and I'm quite certain gamma has similar opinions about inconveniences such as blood loss."

She grunts. "Smart." She tosses the unit from hand to hand, thoughtful.

"Still there, then?" he asks.

She drops it back to the floor. "Yeah. He's still here. Most of the time, at least."

That last is unsettling, but Tex is uncommunicative on a good day and good days have been in short supply as of late. Gamma manifests between them.

"I'm surprised you haven't just deleted him." Wyoming winces-- it's amazing how Gamma's monotone can still convey such blatant accusation.

Tex's jaw tightens. "He's been killing people."

"So have we," Gamma retorts. Wyoming tries frantically to make him shut up with just his brain-- actually viable when you share headspace.

"It's different. He's learned how to jump into other people. Or armour, at least."

The way his gaze drops to his own armour is brief and involuntary but she catches it anyway. "Through the helmet radio, Reggie. He's not gonna fucking possess your bodysuit."

His helmet's still on the front seat of the warthog. He flicks it a distrustful glance. "It's a reasonable concern. We all know how well two AIs in one head works out."

He thinks maybe the way her lips turn down is regret. "Yeah. Did they ever find a body?"

"I wasn’t talking about Carolina."

She taps gloved fingers against her thigh. "Figured that out, huh?"

"Sigma did."

"Connie, too. Why'd he tell you?"

"He told Gamma. They have... memory gaps. Omega might have them as well. He thought it had something to do with The Alpha."

"They tortured him. Why didn't you say anything?"

"You were supposed to protect him," Gamma says, before Wyoming can respond.

"I tried," Tex says, hard and frustrated. "I tried to get him out. I didn't know until I found Connecticut's files."

There's a sinking sort of feeling in his gut. "Allison. How much didn't you know?"

She snorts. "Save your pity. Yeah, you knew I wasn't a real girl before I did our lives are one fucking tragedy after another, sell the goddamn rights."

"I would've told you."

"Bullshit."

He lets it go because he isn't sure she's wrong. Information is power, within freelancer more so than most, and pragmatism holds sway even over friendship. Instead, he says "So you kill Omega. Then what?"

Gamma glares white bright angry then vanishes entirely, retreating to the back of Wyoming's head, crackling static rage sparking down his arms and piercing his temples. Tex shrugs a bit, armour shifting heavily with the movement.

"Try and find Alpha again, I guess. I need to know he's safe before I hand over CT's information to the authorities."

"You've got all of it?" he asks slowly.

"I don't like when you get that look," she says.

"How much, do you think, that might be worth?"

"A full pardon and a decent pension," she says automatically, then shakes her head. "It's not a bargaining chip, Wyoming. The Director tortured him, and stole an Engineer to do it."

"You misunderstand," he says lightly. "How much is it worth to you? You've only got a few more years, Tex, what good will a pardon or pension do you?"

She kicks him into the side of the warthog, bounces his skull off the wheel, body slams him facedown into the dust with an arm around his neck. "What do you know?"

"I know where The Alpha is," he says. No point in playing around, not with black spots dancing in front of his eyes and gamma's confused, panicked screaming in his head 'Allison Allison Allison kill her stop her Reggie Allison'

"Tell me." She relaxes her hold a bit, and there's none of the ferocity he's expecting in her reaction. For the first time he stops to wonder why her initial break in with York failed. He also wonders if she isn’t just spoiling for a fight, because her lapse gives him enough leverage to launch his entire body upward, bracing on his shoulders and flipping her over his head. There's about half a second where he's absolutely certain his neck is going to snap, but then she's off him and he's able to scramble to his knees before she's back, slamming both feet into his chest and sending him skidding backwards. He rolls out of the way of her next attack, using a nearby dropship as cover to regain his feet. His head is ringing and there's blood streaming down his face and she's still coming, a fist meeting his midsection and carrying right on, doubling him over and taking his feet right back out from under him in one hit. She gets him down on his back, this time, crouched over him with all her weight braced down on his shoulders, blowing hair out of her face and yeah, she's bloody grinning like it's come Christmas and her birthday all in one.

"Tell me where he fucking is, you asshole," she says.

He tips his head to the side so he doesn't choke on his own blood. "He's with Florida at one of the simulation outposts."

"Florida got him out?"

He huffs a bitter little chuckle. "Not exactly. We were all suspicious, Tex. That doesn't mean we were all displeased by what we found."

"Jesus," she mutters. "You have the worst fucking taste in friends."

"I'm aware," he grumbles. "Get off of me."

She rolls to her feet, brushing dust off her armour like she'd just knelt down to tie her shoe. He twists and kicks her legs out from under her, scrambling close enough to get in a solid punch across the side of her face before she kicks him half way across the parking lot. It's still bloody worth it.

Once they've cleaned up and Tex has made it very clear she will not be giving him CT's files, she shoulders her backpack and her gun and starts walking away from the town.

"Where will you go?" he calls after her.

She glances back. They've finally put their helmets back on, so he can't see her face. "I think I need some alone time," she says. "You know, contemplate the mysteries of life."

He thinks about an AI that can jump from radio to radio. Thinks it must have a range limitation. Thinks of one body and two minds out on the glass alone with a gun.

"I'll see you again," he calls back. She doesn’t' reply.

He watches her go. He's been watching her since the first time she stood across from him on the training room floor, through missions in the field where his sniper's gaze could follow the faint shimmer of a cloaked soldier as well as anything else. If nothing else, he will always see her. He watches until she's out of sight. It takes a long time, but he's patient.


End file.
